Stricter testing requirements for travelers coming to the US will take effect Monday
The new rules will require each traveler flying into the US from another country to test negative one day before their departure, changing rules that had allowed inbound travelers to test up to three days before entering the country. The new rule from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will take effect at 12:01 a.m. ET on Monday.
“Experts say that Covid-19 cases will continue to rise in the weeks ahead and this winter,” the President said. “So we need to be ready.”
Any foreign national who travels to the US must be fully vaccinated, though there remains no vaccination requirement for American citizens traveling via air, either globally or domestically. The White House said earlier in the day that a vaccine requirement for domestic travel remained on the table as an option for the future.
“It’s going week-to-week, to determine what we need and what the state of affairs (is). We’re going to learn a lot more in the next couple of weeks about the lethality of this virus, about how much it spreads, about whether what we have can control it, etc.,” he continued.
The Delta variant of the coronavirus remains the dominant variant globally and in the United States.
This story has been updated with additional information Thursday.
